“Monsieur Cleon and I are born enemies, and he knows it as well as I do,” murmured Ducie to himself, after the first secret signal of defiance had passed between the two.  “Well, I never was afraid of any man in my life, and I’m not going to begin by being afraid of a valet.”  With that he shrugged his shoulders, and turned his back contemptuously on the mulatto.

Cleon, in his suit of black and white tie, with his quiet, stealthy movements and unobtrusive attentions, would have been pronounced good style as a gentleman’s gentleman in the grandest of Belgravian mansions.  Had he suddenly come into a fortune, and gone into society where his antecedents were unknown, five-sixths of his male associates would have pronounced him “a deuced gentlemanly fellow.”  The remaining one-sixth might have held a somewhat different opinion.

“That coloured fellow seems to be a great favourite with you,” remarked Ducie, as Cleon left the room.

“And well he may be,” answered Platzoff.  “On two separate occasions I owed my life to him.  Once in South America, when a couple of brigands had me at their mercy and were about to try the temper of their knives on my throat.  He potted them both one after the other.  On the second occasion he rescued me from a tiger in the jungle, who was desirous of dining a la Russe.  I have not made a favourite of Cleon without having my reasons for so doing.”

“He seems to me a shrewd fellow, and one who understands his business.”

“Cleon is not destitute of ability.  When I settled at Bon Repos I made him major-domo of my small establishment, but he still retains his old position as my body-servant.  I offered long ago to release him; but he will not allow any third person to come between himself and me, and I should not feel comfortable under the attentions of anyone else.”

Platzoff opened the door as he ceased speaking and led the way to the smoking room.

As you lifted the curtain and went in, it was like passing at one step from Europe to the East—­from the banks of Windermere to the shores of the Bosphorus.  It was a circular apartment with a low cushioned divan running completely round it, except where broken by the two doorways, curtained with hangings of dark brown.  The floor was an arabesque of different-coloured tiles, covered here and there with a tiny square of bright-hued Persian carpet.  The walls were panelled with stamped leather to the height of six feet from the ground; above the panelling they were painted of a delicate cream colour with here and there a maxim or apophthegm from the Koran, in the Arabic character, picked out in different colours.  From the ceiling a silver lamp swung on chains of silver.  In the centre of the room was a marble table on which were pipes and hookahs, cigars and tobaccos of various kinds.  Smaller tables were placed here and there close to the divan for the convenience of smokers.